The Wicked Flea

Chapter 1
     
    My father’s new wife, Gabrielle, was determined to enlist my help in disposing of her first husband.
    Naturally, I protested. “I’m hardly the most suitable person,” I argued in our final phone conversation on the subject. “Besides, we don’t want to end up in jail,
    do we?”
    Gabrielle was adamant. “It’s important, Holly, to liberate oneself from the remains of the past. Even fond remains,” she added before continuing in that extraordinary voice of hers, which is low, throaty, and infinitely persuasive. How persuasive? Well, my father married her, didn’t he? And Buck is not an easy person to persuade to do anything. Believe me, I’ve tried. Not that I’d wanted to talk him out of marrying Gabrielle. On the contrary, I like Gabrielle tremendously, and I’m convinced that falling in love with her is one of the sanest things my father has ever done. Given Buck’s eccentricities, that’s not saying much, I guess, but I’m always surprised and relieved when he does something even remotely normal, and when it comes to choosing wives, Buck is a model of mental hygiene, perhaps because he’s had only two. But maybe I’m being unfair to Buck. In any case, like Gabrielle, my late mother was a wonderful, warm, and sensible, if somewhat controlling, person.
    “It just doesn’t feel right,” Gabrielle went on, “to have a second husband when the first is still around.”
    “It’s illegal,” I countered.
    “Marginally,” Gabrielle admitted, “but if we were caught, which we aren’t going to be, the fine would be, uh, let’s see, not less than one hundred nor more than five hundred dollars, and I can afford that.” She paused. “Or imprisonment,” she conceded, “but technically, it would only be for six months or so, and no one is actually going to throw us in the hoosegow for scattering Walter in Harvard Yard.”
    “Hoosegow?’
    “Spanish origin,” she said smugly. “Isn’t it charming?”
    “The reality wouldn’t be,” I said, “and in Massachusetts you can’t go around blithely sprinkling people’s ashes wherever you feel like, Gabrielle. Among other things, you’d need a permit from the board of health, and you’d have to get Harvard’s permission. What’s wrong with Mount Auburn Cemetery?”
    “It’s terribly expensive,” she whispered, sounding hurt, as if I’d been cruelly referring to her recent financial losses. “And we don’t want a public event, do we? I just want to say a quiet good-bye. That doesn’t seem too much to ask, Holly. And we’d do the same for your father, wouldn’t we?”
    Since Harvard Yard is useless for hunting, fishing, or showing purebred dogs, it’s one of the last places on earth that my own father, Buck, would choose as a final, or even transitory, resting place. Still, I refrained from making the obvious reply, which was, What’s this we? Gabrielle has a likable habit of thinking of everyone as we. If I’d asked her to join me in dispersing the cremated remains of some homicidal fiend who’d been a stranger to both of us, she’d have hurled herself into the project with great enthusiasm. It was easy to imagine her reading a carefully selected verse over the monster’s ashes and shedding genuine tears at the thought of how much we would miss him.
     

     
    When Gabrielle arrived at my house a few days later, I presented her with printed copies of a great many web pages on two topics: Massachusetts law concerning dead bodies and what are fancifully known as “creative scattering options.” My house, I might mention, is the barn-red one on the comer of Appleton and Concord in Cambridge, Massachusetts, about a twenty-minute walk from Harvard Yard. I live on the first floor with Rowdy and Kimi, the two most stunning and brilliant Alaskan malamutes in the world—that’s an objective description—and Tracker. Having offered an objective description of the dogs, I should probably do the same for Tracker, but I can’t stand people who disparage their animals, no matter how hideous, pitiful, or mean-tempered—in Tracker’s case, all three—so let’s just call her a cat. My second-floor tenant, Rita, is my best friend, as well as a clinical psychologist and the owner of a Scottie, Willie. My third-floor tenants, a circuit court judge and her husband, have two handsome Persian cats. I may be the only landlord in Cambridge, or possibly the only landlord anywhere, who won’t rent to you unless you have at least